With the increase in competition in the electronics industry it has become evident that it is highly desirable to provide for automatic insertion of electronic components into printed circuit boards, the objectives being reduction in cost of labor, greater reliability and higher manufacturing rates. Generally, there are two types of automatic inserting machines: one is intended for inserting axial-lead electronic components, while the other is intended for inserting U-shaped-lead electronic components also referred to as radial-lead electronic components. Thus, when it is required to insert a U-shaped-lead electronic component onto a printed circuit board making use of an automatic inserting machine designed for axial-lead electronic components, it has been necessary to take troublesome steps of reforming the axial-lead electronic component into a U-shaped-lead component by bending the lead wires of the axial-lead electronic component, securing the component to a web carrier carrying a series of electronic components, and then feeding the web carrier to an inserting machine.
These steps of reforming and taping have hitherto been carried out wholly manually, this decreasing the advantage of the automatic inserting machine, so that there is an increasing demand for fully automated re-forming of the electronic component and taping of same to web-carriers.
The present invention is aimed at providing an apparatus for re-forming an axial lead electronic component into a radial component and then fixing the component with re-formed lead to an elongated support tape, thereby to automatically prepare a web carrier loaded with electronic components having U-shaped leads.
To this end, according to the invention, there is provided an apparatus comprising, in combination, supply means for supplying axial lead electronic components one by one, transfer means for receiving from said supply means each axial lead electronic component and transferring said axial lead electronic component to a re-forming position and then to an affixing position, said transfer means including support means for supporting an elongated support tape, re-forming means for re-forming an axial type lead of said axial lead electronic component into radial-type lead, and affixing means for affixing the reshaped electronic component onto said elongated support tape.